The first production in the RSC's project of staging all Shakespeare's
history plays is a remarkably clear and affecting version.

Samuel West has the rare talent of making one fall a little in love
with whatever character he is playing. Here, his King Richard is not intrinsically
feeble or unbalanced, but a young man with a similarly young court circle
who simply proves too light for the well orchestrated plans of David Troughton's
Machiavellian Bolingbroke; when Richard realises too late that there is
contention, Bolingbroke has already mapped out the endgame, and all the
king can do is try bitterly to expose the wickedness of what is in effect
a coup d'état.

Director Steven Pimlott echoes and pre-echoes certain resonant lines
in various characters' mouths throughout the proceedings, to suggest that
kingship is a burden imposed rather than a prize to be seized. The production
is played out in a reinvented Pit space: a blank, end-on white box designed
by David Fielding, almost literally a tabula rasa on which the events
and attributes of the various plays in repertoire can be projected just
like the single-colour washes of Simon Kemp's lighting plot. The cumulative
effect on the play is a minor revelation.